


Captain's Log: Error

by Graysworks



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Melancholic Ending, Road trip shenanigans, non explicit/heavily implied smut, set during s7, the 'this is a vent fic' tag i use every time, time loop... but not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-09 05:41:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16443950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Graysworks/pseuds/Graysworks
Summary: During the trip home, the paladins encounter a space anomaly that erases time.To some, this is an opportunity.





	Captain's Log: Error

**Author's Note:**

> honest to god, I've been writing fic for about a year now and I STILL dunno why all my sheith smexy times turn into angst-riddled-confession-one-shots, like. it just. it just does... big whoops but here we go again

It's raining when he douses his head with cold water, fingers tight on stainless steel and the low flicker of dying lights that reflect from the surface. _Space rain_ , Pidge had summed up, after a long string of words Coran imparted that Shiro doesn't recall half of at the moment- but the point is that there's a crashing around the Black Lion's walls tonight, and he's alone in the Keith's room while the others are in the rain. Ironic, somehow, but he couldn't say why.

The faucet shudders through the continual outpour. Vaguely, the concept of wasting taps a gentle reminder into his shoulder, but it's late and Kolivan's parting words are still echoing through his head and Shiro wants nothing more than to drown his sorrows for a minute longer; literally, in some sense. The shower appeals to him for a second before he remembers this is a bathroom that doesn't lock, and while he doesn't think Keith would come barging in, exactly, he's too tired as it is to stand any longer. Maybe in the morning.

_Fight for us, Shiro._ The Blade could barely manage words after months of imprisonment, and it hit hard, hit them all hard. Krolia had never gone so pale, and Keith-

_Fight for him,_ Kolivan finishes in his mind's eye, rough and ragged and personal in a way he's yet to understand.

Some petty part of Shiro insists that he has fought, has died, in fact, for this cause. Even before the Galra, before Kerberos there was work and sacrifice and the fantasy that he could change the world, right down to extending a hand to a boy who would one day become his right- but the years have been catching up to him all week, and now they're stealing breath from his chest as he pushes his head into his elbow. The faucet rattles. Steel mists under the warmth of his long exhale.

He stays there a while. They'll be moving again soon, and he's imposed into Keith's space long enough. The Lion remains dim and unresponsive as ever but it's okay, he thinks, when the others have agreed by some unspoken consensus that he needs _rest_. There's still a doubt somewhere; that he wasn't cut out for this, wasn't cut out to have a team, but there's also too much time to dwell and he'd decided early on not to do that. Instead there's this...  thing, with Keith.

Damn, this thing with Keith.

He runs another palmful of water over his hair, fingers snagging on knots and knows what he might've done a year, two years ago- but suddenly it's not enough, unappealing to push him back to a distance like the others. They've broken through some wall with the events of the past month, and the feeling of change is already looming like a wave building up in the horizon, something that's always been there, but that he's always been able to close the blinds on before-

" _Shiro?_ " Pidge's voice filters through the console behind him. " _Come in, we've got uhh- situation._ "

He shuts off the faucet with a heavy sigh, and goes.

The whole team is pacing when they converge by space wolf into the green Lion. Keith's seemed to have an open space beside him since Krolia left earlier in the day, but Shiro feels strange in occupying it, so he leans on the piloting seat to see what's going on. Allura and Coran are in deep discussion over something as they pass. "-then what if we divert power to act as a shield, perhaps that could-" The princess breaks off at the sight of him studying the readings. "Oh, good, we're all here."

"What's going on again?" Lance grumbles, throwing himself over the back of the chair as Pidge plunks down into it. "Does this have to do with the space rain, or can I go back to sleep? Cause like, as long as we're not contaminated or whatever."

Pidge flaps a hand at him and pulls up her keyboard. "No one is contaminated, we're just running into a few bugs that are interfering with our speed. Give me a minute to pull it up." She begins tapping something out as Hunk joins Lance behind the chair, seemingly just as exhausted while he drapes his arms over the top and buries his head in them. Whatever they'd been up to in the rain must have been taxing, Shiro thinks idly, suppressing an habitual urge to smile. Allura and Coran lapse back into speculation.

Keith wanders closer as soon as the chart blooms in full over the screens, a plethora of moving data and flashing lights that only Pidge could interpret for them. Shiro squints at a visual model as it morphs and shifts into something recognizable. "Is that... a wormhole?" Allura puts a hand to her face and studies it, brow furrowed deeply. The circles under her eyes explain the less than immediate response.

"I dunno, looks like a storm to me," Hunk suggests, propping his chin on his fist, squinting when the model flashes again and changes further. "What exactly does it have to do with our engines?"

"This thing is sucking power from our thrusters," Pidge explains. She pulls up a few blueprints to point out the affected spots and resumes tapping out a sequence on the other side of the screen, something like a command prompt that isn't taking even when she modifies. "It's pulling us in." The model simulates their trajectory in a quick grid construction of green squares, and Shiro shifts on his feet when the Lions dissolve into the opening, folds his arm over his chest when they're spit out exactly where they'd started. It almost seems like a non-issue, but wormholes are unpredictable by nature. There's no telling what damage this one could do.

Keith goes back to pacing while Lance straightens and gestures vaguely at the screens. "Alright, so this- stormhole, wormstorm, whatever it is- seems pretty harmless, right? I say we hit the hay and go with the flow, not worth losing sleep over." There's an almost immediate consensus from both Coran and Hunk, and then after a beat of silence, Shiro contributes his agreement. If Pidge can keep an eye on the readings before they hit surface field level, then they can always pull up before being swept in.

Allura sighs and reaches to squeeze Lance's shoulder, apologetic. "I'm afraid that's not all. This isn't an ordinary wormhole, it's- an extremely old universal phenomena, I think it's been here for some millennia. There's no long term effect, and the damage will likely be nonexistent."

Hunk shrugs and makes a vague gesture at the model. "Then that's a problem because...?"

"Because I've seen one of those before," Romelle pitches in from where she's curled with the wolf in their corner. "And it doesn't just alter distance- it erases time. We'll come out of it with no knowledge of ever going in."

The team freezes for one concentrated beat, digesting the information.

Hunk straightens as if electrified, alert again. "So we reboot the propulsion system and get out of here, what's the problem, exactly?"

"The problem is we can't," Pidge says, nearly talking over him while clacking keys disrupt the quiet again, Romelle's anxious murmuring and Keith's pacing behind the others joining in. "Like I said, we're being pulled in, and there's no way around. Within a few hours, there's- nothing we can do." She seems almost casual about relaying the stats on their imminent backward acceleration, but Shiro notices the tenseness in her hands while she starts running calculations to the side, and eyes the rest of the team while they shift in agitated contemplation.

"Then we get the shields back online-"

"Nope, not enough power. If we tried, we could blow all our internal lights."

"So what, we're supposed to just go with it, there's gotta be-"

Shiro sighs and shuts his eyes on the quickly escalating argument. It seems simple enough, and it's not like they've hit the dead ends before, but there's something frustrating in the prospect of losing more time to the abyss of space- even if they don't remember it happening, and nobody gets hurt in the end. His head is starting to pound again with the team's dissolving composure. They've been out here too long, already, and the fight with Macidus took something out of their recently reconstructed morale. If they'd just _calm down_ for a minute-

"Everyone, that's enough," Keith says, and a warm hand curls over Shiro's shoulder. He opens his eyes to determined features and quiet resolve and- it settles the room so quickly, eases something in everyone's anxiety. "Here's what we're gonna do."

There's not much, in the end. Hunk gets on those shields while they talk specifics and keep an eye on the clock, and then the wolf returns them to their respective Lions, and the waiting game begins. Shiro thinks Romelle must explain seven different ways before the situation really starts to make sense, but it all boils down to an inevitability when all's said and done. They'll spend a few days in the space-mass warp where things will progress as normal, such as night and day and most everything they've done before to fill the time- and then the tide of the wormhole will reverse, and the occurrence of those few days with it.

Hunk seems to finally grasp the concept when Romelle says death is an impermanence in the state they'll be in, or at least, he must fall into some realm of acceptance, because he stops asking after that. Lance is the one that comes up with different pranks he could feasibly pull in the amount of time they'll have and Pidge, ever the enabler, jumps in with her own even as Hunk gives his immediate and vehement opposition to the idea. Allura collapses into giggles over the comm link while Keith tells them to pull it together. He's smiling too, though. It's the first time since Krolia left, and Shiro has to walk away from the cockpit to get some air back in his lungs.

Hours stretch into longer hours, and then a few more to boot. By the time everyone's started dozing again, they still haven't hit the field surface, and Pidge's only explanation is something muttered about _time_ and _damn space anomalies_ and _need some coffee to deal with this_ or the like that Shiro doesn't bother chastising. He drifts on his feet before being told to take the bed, and then he's alone to listen while Keith guides them on course in quiet movements, to watch the transparent anomaly approach through the open skylight. There's something eye-drawing about the glassy iridescence as it pulls them closer.

"Hey Keith," Lance comes in over the private channel, about an hour out to the collision.

Keith shifts and mutes where Romelle and Coran's snores have started to fill the other communicators. “Here. What’s up?”

There’s a slight pause. “I don’t know, it’s just- you think this could be an opportunity to talk to Allura? I mean, I've been thinking about telling her sooner or later, and if it doesn't work out... it never happened in the first place, you know?" Shiro rolls onto his side in faint interest. Lance coming to _Keith_ for advice, now that's something he didn't see coming, but the paladin has an interesting point about the anomaly's consequences; or opportunities, he tacks on, and has to close his eyes to keep from tracing the piloting chair. Keith audibly taps his fingers against the controls before he responds.

"I don't think that's a good idea, Lance," He says finally, and sighs. "I think you need to figure this out between you when it's real."

Lance sounds as if he's frowning over the line, uncertain, almost like working something out in his head. This must be more important to him than Shiro’d thought. "But... that's the thing, isn’t it, it- _would_ be real."

"Except for the part where it never happened." Shiro bites a smile at the blunt response, but Keith's voice lifts as he goes on. "Look, I'm not- the best guy to ask here, okay? But I know that you and Allura deserve a start where it counts, and this- it just seems like a cop out, Lance. You can do better than this."

A snort comes over the line. "Says you."

Shiro fights back a grin when Keith's tone dries again. "Yeah. Says me."

He closes the channel, and the wormhole looms in near invisibility above them.

 

* * *

 

  
Keith wakes him.

First it’s unclear that it _is_ Keith, with how strangled and convoluted the noises come- because he doesn’t make noises like that. Not here, not in the Castle, not in a fearful state in the Garrison infirmary- he's got a hundred different sounds of pain that Shiro knows, and that's not one of them. It ebbs and shallows until the adrenaline runs cold in his veins, and even then the urge to rise remains.

"Keith," He calls softly, testing, and rolls out of bed when it garners no response. His feet hit the ground and the loss of his arm makes itself known again with the stumble he has to correct, quickly, but the bathroom isn’t far and the tether on that old fear is strong. Keith’s newly built figure is hunched shakily over the sink when he gets close. Shoulders curled, back bare with strength that has Shiro’s eyes skittering away suddenly- he’s ignoring him for a reason, and it shouldn’t sting as much as it does.

“Sorry,” He whispers, achingly distracted. “Bad dreams.” His fingers rake through his hair, catch on snags that Shiro wants to work out gentler. Something is off in the cadence of his breath. “Pidge- updated us while you were asleep, and- her calculations were off. We only have about three, uh, three hours.”

It takes a second for the meaning to fully set.

“We just hit?” Shiro leans his empty side against the doorframe, trying to lighten something he isn’t sure needs it. There’s weight to where they are, here, quiet in the dim light of a humming room some thousand galaxies from earth; there’s the unspoken demanding a presence, and Shiro hates himself a little for considering giving it one. He has to force his hand idle to keep from reaching out. Keith makes a little _mmhm_ noise in way of response, and it’s harder than it should be. “You should get back to sleep then, let it pass before morning-”

“No,” Keith says, and takes a breath like there’s something about it he needs to settle. And then softer, eyes finding Shiro’s in the mirror- “No.”

The shade of his gaze then is familiar.

Silence twists and distends like rushing air, too eager to fill in the cracks, oppressive. Shiro holds that look for an eight beat- nine, ten, and he’s too tired to keep track after eleven come and go. Hesitation is tangible. This is something more, something long forgotten again and scared.

Fight, says his mind’s eye.

But they’ve done enough of that.

Shiro’s feet are moving, curious, before it can set in that there was a decision to be made in the first place. His fingers still twitch to find, touch, hold; Keith’s are reaching back in some irony to brush his hip first, and the sound of the inhale when he connects rings too sharp through the stillness. Shiro brackets him with an arm and doesn’t flatter himself. “No?” It’s been a long time and loneliness is a living thing in his bones too, seizing somewhere in his chest like a cramp he can’t work out, winding around them both with the years and the distance and the wanting. “Tell me you don’t want this.”

Regardless of the hesitation, their proximity doesn’t exactly leave room for uncertainty, but it still doesn’t have to be anything more than a means to an end- or so Shiro tells himself when he tucks into the crook where shoulder meets scar, meets skin and bone and a hidden place that he presses his mouth against.

Keith swallows. “You know, for someone who’s been flying as long as you have-” His words roughen just a bit, telling. “You’re... a little blind.”

“Transparency was never my strong suit,” He agrees, muffled from shifting up closer.

“Three hours, Shiro.”

It’s strained. He figures now is as good a time as ever to work on the aforementioned fault, and skates his hand across leanness and lines that dip under the touch with the next breath, a motion more than a sound. Where his conviction might be absent, Keith’s body recognizes Shiro’s and the reaction is enough; a slight hardening under his fingers when he brushes lower, heating skin under his mouth with every press and a shaking in the hand that seeks him out, fumbling but sweet. His hips hitch into Shiro’s touch and his eyes close in the mirror.

Something creaks in their peripheral, precedes the patter of water when the shower goes on. Keith makes a disapproving noise at the Lion when it rumbles, as if in exasperation, and Shiro hides a grin in his hair. “Subtle.”

The disgruntled mutter he gets in response is too quiet to read, but Keith doesn’t move away when Shiro retracts his hand, strokes it instead through the dark hair falling over his face. Head bowed, one arm braced against the sink with tremors- he’s never been so unreadable in his life, and it’s enough to give Shiro pause again while the steam collects, the mirror fogs, just enough to hide his face from sight. Transparency aside, he’s always been the one to run. Shiro hates that he hopes now isn’t another instance of such and brushes again, inky black from his nape, disguising the need to worry his teeth over a soft point by ghosting breath across the area instead. Keith shivers.

“Ground rules?” As much as this is already reckless and impulsive and a dozen other discarded labels, it’s worth asking. And as much as he already knows the answer- Keith never fails to catch him off guard.

“Don’t regret me.”

For a minute, more than the humidity is suffocating.

Shiro moves Keith, turns him, space be damned to rushing him up against the counter and gripping that blackness in his fingers like an anchor. Another sharp inhale weighs the air and cuts the inches down, down between wide-eyed anticipation -trust is a gray area they’ve mapped enough for this- and red faces, trembling hands. It feels like anger that propels the first move of sweat and heat and longing, but the scent is of fear and Shiro’s learned to make a distinction when it comes to Keith. He sinks his teeth into that line and tastes _want_.

The noise it kicks up through Keith’s chest has his heart going. Abandoning his jaw, Shiro marks over a trail of old bruising to his throat; heat sifts low in his gut and the slide of rough palms under his shirt only fans the spark, speaks to how he’s always been weak for those elusive affections and now more. “Don’t,” He murmurs, covering Keith’s hand where one falters. “Give me reason to.” The shudder of his chest betrays just enough to tell him that there’s an understanding there, and then Keith is pulling his face close like with something to prove, kiss hard and unmistakable in a way that keeps Shiro from asking again. He lets himself be laid with that stubborn decision, basks in it even as Keith gives a little mutter of _asshole_ and pulls at the hem of his shirt.

Their feet are moving. Keith backs him to the shower while they attempt to fumble their way through undress without losing contact, and this new determination looks too good on him. He’s fluid in a way he wasn’t, now, and built when they’re bare and he’s closing the door behind himself- older, meaner in a way that Shiro feels when there’s a hand in his hair and pressure moving him by the chest against the shining metal. The blue lightbulb flickers a sudden and soft orange with Black’s interfering. Both that and the rain pattern of auto-generated water hit Keith just right, and something molten in Shiro’s throat roots him to the spot when his lips part.

He means to kiss him. _Kiss_ him, deep and true this time, draw in his bright, searching eyes and rough hands and long legs, burning spirit- but that old fear becomes new again and tells him that he’d break if Shiro tried. The wet grows at the corner of his eyes. It isn’t the steam.

“Tell me you don’t want this,” Keith roughs out, inches away. “And I’ll-”

Shiro pulls him in tight, and kisses him.

 

* * *

 

  
The quiet but insistent beep and run of water pulls him out of sleep. Lion dark and console still dimmed for night, it’s harder to find his footing than it should be when he rolls from the bed, but Shiro manages. Keith doesn’t occupy the pilots seat where the former pads over. He leans against the armrest and hits the open message button.

“Hey Shiro,” Pidge greets with a yawn, face materializing through the pixels of the screen. “We’re just coming up on the energy field, making contact in about… three, two,” She taps something beyond the camera that must be her watch and frowns, scrubs at her eyes, squints again at whatever it is she’s seeing. “Ah… hang on, looks like we’re heading past the surface now.” The grogginess of her voice speaks to the early hour, and Shiro finds his own eyes drooping too.

“Huh,” He manages, blinking briefly, and and winces when he goes to scan the bright readings that pop up next to her. “Thought we were... thought we were supposed to be pulled in?”

A handful of taps come from her keyboard, the telltale sign of curiosity persevering through exhaustion, as it so often does with Pidge. “I guess we’ve just exited.” Shiro’s yawn drowns out his next attempt at questioning, so he scrolls through the data taken from the night before, instead, vaguely confused as to finding it uninterrupted. Allura had to have been right, then- if the storm hasn’t lashed out at them in some twist of fate by now, then it probably won’t. Pidge adjusts her glasses and shrugs in way of response, moving on to scanning the rest of the Lions. “Anyway- that’s a good sign, I think. We’re in the clear, Lions all okay and whatnot. Probably safe to sleep now.”

The water stops running somewhere behind Shiro. He glances back before at Pidge again, apologetic, but she just waves him off, focus already redirected to tapping out something across another screen. Her head bobs at the murmur of _Thanks, Pidge_ , and the connection closes off with another soft beep. Shiro pushes gently off the armrest to move away.

“Keith,” He calls softly, testing, seeking out the soft glow of blue from the bathroom where it spills out. Keith’s figure is hunched over the sink where he finds him, water staining his collar where wet hair lays, pushed back around his ears, dripping with quiet echoes into the empty sink. “Pidge just connected, says the worst is over.” His shoulder sinks against the doorframe of the small room. He gives Keith another glance and notes the changed clothes, tired eyes. “Everything... okay?”

Keith sighs quietly as he runs a hand through his hair, murmuring when he answers. “Yeah.” It’s a tone achingly distracted in simplicity. Shiro can’t put his finger on the familiar feel, but something is undeniably off in the way that his breath comes after. “Yeah. Sorry.”

He straightens after a few long, long beats, turning from the mirror with a troubled expression.

“Weird dreams,” He finishes, and brushes past Shiro without another word.


End file.
